The UK government has announced the allocation of 273 million dollars to create its most powerful supercomputer to date, named “Isambard-AI”. It will be classified among the top supercomputers powered by artificial intelligence in the world upon its activation.
The supercomputer will contain thousands of advanced NVIDIA chips, enabling it to execute over 200 quadrillion calculations per second. Isambard-AI is expected to begin operation in the summer of 2024 and will be hosted at the University of Bristol.
According to NVIDIA, the supercomputer is being built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and will be based on 5448 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips. The computer will have the capability to achieve over 21 exaflops of AI performance, equivalent to more than 21 quintillion floating-point operations per second for AI applications like training large language models.
As per the University of Bristol, Isambard-AI will be ten times faster than the fastest supercomputer currently in the UK. It will be housed at the Bristol National Infrastructure for Cooling and Self-Sufficient Data Center.
This was announced during the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit, where leaders from various countries, including the United States, gather to discuss the future of AI and the potential risks it may pose.
Ultimately, Isambard-AI will be used to communicate with other supercomputers in the UK as well, aiming to further enhance performance.
Upon activation, Isambard-AI will become one of the most powerful AI systems in the field of open science worldwide, according to Simon Macintosh Smith from the University of Bristol.
